frightened by the bite though it's no harsher than the bark
by flesh and bone telephone
Summary: How many throats do I have to rip apart for you to understand, sister? — She loved them, and so Niklaus came for them. [Klebekah]


**disclaimer:** i still own little else than my spectacular person. all of you should understand there is nothing i will say no to if the arctic monkeys are involved, this is a fact, and it is also a weapon.  
**dedication:** for the wonderful, very brave anon who left a prompt on my tumblr page. you weren't sure i'd write klebekah, and i never in a million years imagined myself writing klebekah, and then of course, i wrote klebekah.  
**warning:** klebekah? also, yes, not betad. because actually editing my own work is difficult, and probably indicative of the bourgeois.  
**notes:** i already posted this on tumblr, just posting this up on ffnet for anyone who wants to enjoy it here. also, vanity, duh.  
**tvd ficathon prompt**: Klaus/Rebekah_ - "A knife twists at the thought that I should fall short of the mark, frightened by the bite though its no harsher than the bark."_

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_Stop and wait a sec. Oh, when you look at me like that, my darling, what did you expect?_  
_I probably still adore you with your hands around my neck, or I did last time I checked._  
_Not shy of a spark, a knife twists at the thought that I should fall short of the mark,_  
_frightened by the bite though it's no harsher than the bark -_  
_Middle of adventure, such a perfect place to start._

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"Look." He said.

"No."

" '_Bekah_."

"Please, I can't."

"Look, sister - or I will _make_ you look."

She screeched, a banshee, when he drew his fingers into her hair, tugged her to the mirror. The both of them like cards pressed tight together. Her spine against his ribs, his bones bending into her skin hard enough to leave bruises. Rebekah hissed and tore at his arms, dragging deep red welts across his skin that healed instantly. She struggled wildly, but he was her brother, the center from which she had spun for eternities, the heart from which she had tried to unwind herself from for centuries, to no avail.

He had always been stronger than her. His fingertips stung red, like the bloom of tulips, like the rouge painted on her mouth that made his own turn and twist over the verge of some ugly word, some deeper accusation. _Whore._

Red with another one of your boy's lives.

_How many throats do I have to rip apart for you to understand, sister?_

Rebekah bore her teeth at him, her whittled sharp whites. She'd found him painting, and flung her fists at him, done with tears, filled only with violent, furious longing. For several things unallowed to her, for thirsts that she hardly understood. For understandings that slipped away from her, crippled, malformed. Stumbling over everything in regards to time, to him.

He wasn't the only one allowed anger, he wasn't the only one allowed wrath. She'd wanted to show him that, her wrath, but they are here again - one violent altercation after another, the same destination after centuries of fumbling, revolutions, him pulling her back by the hair, by the heartstrings of her. Forcing back her head so he can see her throat bare.

They were before the mirror, he'd clamped her arms against her sides, fingers still vice like around her throat, forcing her to _look._

His eyes were gold, caught in that transformation, more wolf than human, more savage than sane. Gold reflected in the silver surface. Hawk like. Hot as the summer haze, he bore her face up, his cheek pressed to the side of her temple, their breaths fast and furious some mockery of coitus. She could feel his words brush against her ear, nipping like razors, the strength of his arms a band around her waist, pulling her flush against him.

Her face was aflame, with the closeness, the mortification. Anger, perhaps, that he thought to hold her this way to make a point, as men might hold women they want.

_Let go of me,_ she might have said. That impossible demand. She might have hissed it, his lips were pursed, hardly impressed by her agitation. His fingertips seared harder, any harder and he might crush her throat. Touch tipped against the under side of her chin, her heart racing wildly, he could feel it all. How frightened she was.

A thousand years ago she would have laughed, smiled and rested easy against him. _You wouldn't hurt me._ Like it was another one of his boyish games.

All Niklaus knew was hurt.

Rebekah stilled soon enough, calmed and went lax in his arms. Did as she had seen lambs tired of struggling in the jaws of lions do. Waiting some conclusion, to be set free, or devoured.

She waited for the click of blade between her ribs, the mechanical sigh, the compression of heart beneath steel.

"He wasn't doing anything wrong," she said, looking where he bid, doing as he bid. "He treated me like a lady. He wanted to _marry_ me." Rebekah still doing everything he asked. She shouldn't have promised him anything all those years ago, she'd been a fool. She was still a fool, too. For loving him still.

"You won't be anyone's wife."

"I'm to busy being yours, am I?" She bit off, shoving back at him again. The venom of it slithered off him like water, he held her gaze in the mirror, jaw fixed, did not deny - did not speak a _word._

She hated him for his silences, for neither confirming, nor dismissing it. For leaving the matter aloft, curled like smoke from his cheroots, hanging up whole ceilings, swimming and doing nothing else. It was on the tip of her tongue, to know that if she bent herself back, soft and welcoming like one of his painted, Greek whores, his _muses - _ that she might feel him hard behind her. That he might push against her with a heated snarl, and trap her between him and table with nothing between them but skin, and the steaming coils of his hoarse curses and hers. And that too, would still lay too much between them.

Niklaus did not cross, so Rebekah did not ply him and sigh back against him and see just how far he might bend the both of them. It'd be proving everything he feared, this cosmic poetry, since they were children. Rebekah running after Nik, Rebekah crying over Nik, running after him wherever he went, promising him that wherever he went she'd go with him, he'd drag her behind him. Kings and Queens of that old world of theirs, that pretend kingdom in the woods, in that small, safe place of children. She's already given him too many promises to give him anything more.

There were still cracks across the surface, fissures she'd made when she'd hurled him into the glass before he'd bested her and pinned her. And though their reflections appeared split, fractured, the reality was whole and could not be ignored; that was what Niklaus's ultimate end point in this all, for he scolded her. "Look, what do you see? Tell me."

It wasn't a request. Her eyes stung, her throat felt like she'd swallowed razors, and his hold burrowed deep like teeth.

"I see myself."

He frowned that she had not remarked his inclusion in the picture he was trying to paint in this mirror . "You see _us_, the two of us." His grip relaxed slightly, but was no more gentle than before. His exhalations were hot next to her ear, whisky warm. He was warm the night he bit her all those years ago, when she'd defended Elijah and it had made him angry. He'd been warm the hour they'd all been turned into monsters. They'd died together then, too. "I raised you, I stand by you. I protect you. You are my _sister._"

"I never wanted your _protection_."

"We're monsters, Bekah. _Gods_. I saw a kindness in you when we were children, you loved me," he explained in soft tones, as if he meant to comfort. "I wanted to make -"

"I'm tired of loving you!"

"You're pretending at cruelty again, and doing very badly. You promised me, remember? _Always and forever_," he echoed those damned words like a hypocrite, _he's_ the hypocrite. He'd done nothing but betray them all with his selfishness, and she wanted to tear her nails into his arms again. Feel the furious boiling beneath her claws. "You want to be some mere lord's wife, but to spare any of your time on the blink of his is _heresy_. I cannot allow it. I will not allow it." She felt him kiss her hair, pressing his lips briefly behind her ear, chaste. As chaste as a brother to a sister. Niklaus paused there, ruminating, spoke again, words shivering hot on her skin. "...don't be so self-righteous by the way. If you had really minded so much before you'd have fought me a lot harder. I will always kill them, _always_, Rebekah."

"I'd rather have a dagger than bear another moment of your loving me."

His wolf-eyes slipped into startled blue, the sudden resurgence of an old hurt. She had her way with words too. She could maul him, too.

Niklaus chuckled though his mouth was sour, bitter as cherry vinegar. His heart against her spine, the low reverberation like the purr of a lion. "What were all your lovers names, again? Renard, Leon, Moliere - they all say the same things when I kill them, when I tell them why they need to be dead. They all curse you, sister, and tell me to take you back, they say they're sorry that they offend me. They promise to never see you again. None of them would die for you, even when they do."

She felt her cheeks burn white hot, her whole body thrum with hatred, with betrayal. Knives for knives, he turned everything against her, was this love? Was this mauling, _love?_

She wanted to rip his flesh from his body, destroy him. She wanted to turn around and tear his eyes out, but like steel, he'd folded her arms by her sides, and it was _distracting. _The heat and fit of him, hard body, the feel of his beating chest pressed hard against her back was enough to drive a lesser woman wild. He had once kissed her throat, when they were newly made, when she'd seen him rise out of the water, goldriver body built for war, and Rebekah had turned her eyes away. He'd kissed her throat, murmuring, _there can be no shame between monsters._

The memory burnt holes in her. Rebekah caught the frightened eyes of the girl in the mirror, tried to catch and bury the expression before he could read it, but Niklaus seen it, and he smiled a little smile. She _hated_ that smile, when they were children she used to think it kind and noble, the smile of a prince. He'd rush up the hillock with branch in hand, brandishing it over Finn, scream about her honor and pout terribly after whenever she wanted a branch for herself too. He always wanted her sat prim on the grass, guarded by some vile enemy, some _metaphor_ - so he could be her knight, so he could _save_ her _and keep me and trap me, for himself_. It was the least that she could allow him then.

All her years she had been shooting, _stumbling_ head-long into love, into all the arms of men, killing them the moment she looked at them. She knew the moment she looked at them that they were all dead, and still, she loved them anyway. Rebekah loved them, and so Niklaus came for them. Patient and tsking, teaching her even as she failed to learn.

She would forget their names, in the next decade, in the next century. Niklaus was always right, he was determined that no one dispute that.

_Like a humming bird,_ Niklaus mouthed against her ear, fingers tapping at the pulse point of her neck. Making her feel electric and vile all at once. He'd always been beautiful, he'd been the most beautiful person she'd ever known, and he was still that. The color of his eyes still a shock of wonder to her gut, so strange in shade.

A bruise bloomed and died at her throat when he pressed again. Affectionate almost. "You ran from me so many times, you tried. For almost a thousand years, you've been fighting me, in your little small ways, in your little bursts of anger - and then you stopped. It hurt me, that you gave up. But I was pleased that you did, if you gave up, it meant you might love me. I was wrong, though. You've not been defeated though, Bekah, you're still being foolish, you're still lunging at every new breath of a man that passes us. You know better. You are _supposed_ to know better. Sometimes I think you _want_ me to kill them."

He's a liar and he draws his conclusions wherever he desires. Her curses fall from her like old poetry, like recitation. A brutal, final sigh. "The devil take you, Niklaus."

He tasted this, for a while. Heart suckling with curiousness, on a pause, wondering at the thought. At her terms. And then he spoke again, always the final say.

"He'd have lovelier prize with you, sister. I'd never let him though, he'd never dream of it. You're lovely, you know," Niklaus whispered, soft, true, a loosening in him, a final give. It is the gravest, most simple thing he had ever said. And it fell from him as weightless as the smoke of his beloved cheroots, a truth without malice, but without kindness. "You've never been more lovely."

When he slips away from her she feels naked, and cold. The eyes in the mirror are bright and dazed, lurid with rage that dissolves in her like spun sugar, she cannot keep firm. Paintings of other women stare at her, knowing, accusatory, and Rebekah would say that she feels alone - but she knows that Niklaus would never allow her that mercy, or that reprieve.

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_But I crumble completely when you cry. It seems like once again you've had to greet me with goodbye._  
_I'm always just about to go and spoil a surprise, take my hands off of your eyes too soon_  
_I'm going back to 505 if it's a seven hour flight or a forty-five minute drive._  
_In my imagination you're waiting, lying on your side, with your hands between your thighs_  
_and a smile_

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**end note:** done.


End file.
